lin, of which the difficulties in America formed the theme. His friend's views, however, failed to make Mr. Strahan a convert to what Franklin deemed the liberal and just course. On the 5th of July, 1775, Franklin wrote the following from Philadelphia:

"MR. STRAHAN: You are a member of Parliament, and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands. tney are stained with the blood or your relations! You and I were long friends; you are now my enemy, and I am yours,

"B. FRANKLIN."

This letter, which was published in the London papers soon after its receipt, was the subject of a great deal of remark. That there was no bitterness of personal feeling between the friends, is evident from the fact that their correspondence, interrupted by the Revolutionary war, was never wholly abandoned, and was resumed at a later period with a great deal of warmth and earnestness of friendship. The apparent harshness of the above note is in the conclusion; but it is palpably evident, from its face, that the writer merely yielded to the temptation to give a common and usually unmeaning form a terse and significant epigrammatic turn. Indeed, it may have been, and most probably was, an after thought, which occurred at the instant. Mr Strahan died, at an advanced age, in 1785, and the

last letter which he received from Franklin (1784) contains a pleasant review of the events of the war, and of the friendship of the writers, which we ex

tract:

"You 'fairly acknowledge that the late war terminated quite contrary to your expectation.' Your expectation was ill founded; for you would not believe your old friend, who told you repeatedly that by those measures England would lose her colonies, as Epictetus warned in vain his master that he would break his leg. You believed rather the tales you heard of our poltroonery, and impotence of body and mind. Do you not remember the story you told me of the Scotch sergeant who met with a party of forty American soldiers, and, though alone, disarmed them all and brought them in prisoners? a story almost as improbable as that of an Irishman, who pretended to have alone taken and brought in five of the enemy by surrounding them. And yet, my friend, sensible and judicious as you are, but partaking of the general infatuation, you seemed to believe it.

Yankee was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and the Parliament did not think the petitions of such creatures were fit to be received and read in so wise an assembly. What was the consequence of this monstrous pride and insolence? You first sent small armies to subdue us, believing them more than sufficient, but soon found yourselves obliged to send greater; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our country beyond the protection of their ships,

were either repulsed and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten, and taken prisoners. An American planter, who had never seen Europe, was chosen by us to command our troops, and continued during the whole war. This man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best generals baffled, their heads bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their employers. Your contempt of our understandings, in comparison with your own, appeared to be much better founded than that of our courage, if we may judge by this circumstance, that in whatever court of Europe a Yankee nego.. tiator appeared, the wise British minister was routed, put in a passion, picked a quarrel with your friends, and was sent home with a flea in his ear. But, after all, my dear friend, do not imagine that I am vain enough to ascribe our success to any superiority in any of those points. I am too well acquainted with all the springs and levers of our machine not to see that our human means were unequal to our undertaking, and that, if it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If I had ever before been an Atheist, 1 should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity! It is He that abases the proud and favors the humble. May we never forget His goodness to us, and may our future conduct manifest our gratitude!

"But let us leave these serious reflections, and converse with our usual pleasantry. I remember